As the weather turns warm, free outdoor concerts light up all over St. Louis.

This summer concert season has a few changes to its lineup. Clayton has added “May Musical Mondays” to its previous events; St. Peters has replaced its “Summer Concert Series” with a much larger “Lakeside Series” at a Lakeside Park.

As the weather gets warmer this month, St. Louis gains two more places to enjoy springtime outdoors. St. Charles County is cutting the ribbon of a new park on Monday, while St. Louis County debuted a new park last week.

The world championship of Scottish athletics is coming to Chesterfield this fall. The sporting event, Masters World Championship (MWC), is coordinating this year with the annual St. Louis Scottish Games and Cultural Festival.

The success of the local event, held in Forest Park since 2001, has helped in drawing the global competition to the area, said St. Louis’s Scottish Games spokesman Mark Sutherland.

The mayor of Chesterfield is sticking by his threat for his city to secede from St. Louis County, contending that his city is fed up with a lack of progress on changing the county’s sales tax distribution system.

But St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley has dismissed the threat, calling Chesterfield Mayor Bob Nation’s comments “over the top.”

In the summer of 1993, flood waters from the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers broke levee after levee in the St. Louis region, covering large swathes of land, destroying property, disrupting lives and creating hazardous conditions.

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: Just beyond the noise and traffic of the Chesterfield Valley -- past the big levee behind the Taubman Prestige Outlets mall -- is Chesterfield’s newest nature park, set to open this fall.

Despite its proximity to a retail center, the 188-acre site is a surprisingly secluded and quiet spot. It's a place to watch for white-tailed deer and migratory birds, a place to ponder the beauty of the Missouri River floodplain.

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: During the early days of the 1993 disaster that left businesses, homes and farmland awash on 4,000 flooded acres of the Chesterfield Valley, the possibility of rebuilding always seemed not a question of "if" but of "when."

This article originally appeared in the St. Louis Beacon:Most springs, nature sends a reminder to the residents of the St. Louis region that they live at the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri, two major American rivers that have the potential to rise up and storm the levees.

Ground was broken Thursday on the new Daniel Boone Bridge just west of Chesterfield.

The $111 million project will replace a 75-year-old span over the Missouri River and link St. Louis and St. Charles Counties.

MoDOT District Engineer Ed Hassinger says the bridge is the final project to make I-64 a true, interstate-quality, highway.

“We’re thrilled today to start on the project,” Hassinger says. “The design is about 90 percent complete and you’re going to see people starting work on the ground this month. The plan is that we’ll have the new bridge open in 2014.”

Two outlet malls are racing to build in what some say is one of the most valuable retail areas in America -- the Chesterfield Valley. If both are built, the companies would compete with each other, the Chesterfield Commons strip mall and the nearby Chesterfield Mall, risking financial failure.

Sydney Miller examines what it is about the Chesterfield region that makes it so attractive.

The Chesterfield Valley could see two new outlet malls by next fall. Taubman Prestige Outlets began construction today, just two weeks after St. Louis Premium Outlets broke ground on its project less than a mile away. Prestige Outlet Malls broke ground across highway 40 from the Chesterfield Commons and construction on St. Louis Premium Outlets is occurring near the Daniel Boone Bridge.

Chesterfield will join Kansas City, Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle and several other cities when an American Girl "experiential retail store" opens in the St. Louis suburb in spring 2012.

The official announcement came from American Girl Tuesday.

Visitors to the 10,850-square-foot store at the Chesterfield Mall will be able to purchase American Girl's line of dolls and books, take their dolls in for a haircut at a "doll hair salon," make doll-sized t-shirts and eat in an in-store "bistro," a release from the company said.

Details of a new outlet mall in the Chesterfield Valley were released today. The Spirit of St. Louis Outlets would be located on 55 acres about four miles west of Chesterfield Commons on the south side of Interstate-64 near the Spirit Airport. Officials say the $85-million, 555,000-square-foot development would create more than 2,500 jobs and generate $265 million in annual sales.

Stephen Coslik, CEO of Woodmont Outlets, says the location is perfect – it’s underserved by outlet stores and there’s access to the interstate.

If you need to get across the Missouri River from Chesterfield to St. Charles County on Sept. 25, plan ahead - your normal route won't be open.

The Missouri Department of Transportation is closing the westbound span of the Daniel Boone Bridge, which carries Interstate 64 over the Missouri River, from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 25. Workers must inspect the 1930s-era bridge, which carries more than 75,000 cars a day.

Wasayul S. Haque, 22, has been reported by the Chesterfield Police Department as missing and endangered.

Haque is described by the police department as being 5'6'' tall, 110 lbs. with black hair, brown eyes and a medium brown complexion. He is described wearing a multi-colored long sleeve shirt, blue jeans and no shoes.

The St. Louis Cardinals and Kansas City Royals will be teaming up to help raise money for tornado recovery efforts in Joplin, Mo. Missouri's two Major League Baseball teams are to meet for an interleague series June 17-19 in St. Louis.

The former chairman of the St. Louis County Planning Commission has been indicted on a charge of federal bank fraud, according to a press release from the Eastern District of Missouri division of the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Douglas Morgan, 65, from Chesterfield, could face a maximum penalty of up to 30 years in prison and/or fines up to $1,000,000 if convicted.